for someone not deeply into computers, it might be best to use a program. ccleaner is free and it will clean most of the junk off your computer without danger. you can run both the cleaner and registry cleaner with this program. the registry cleaner allows you to back up before changes and that's always a good idea.

if you are using a windows OS you have a program on there called disk cleanup. it will get a lot of the junk also and it gets a few things that ccleaner does not.

depending on what operating system you are using you should either have your computer to defrag on a schedule, or you should manually defrag it from time to time. do this AFTER you have cleaned your computer.

also take a look at your programs. remove all that you are not using. do this before running the registry cleaner on ccleaner.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

I like this question, mainly because everything is subjective. For example, I have Comcast and using www.speedtest.net I get readings (using the closest server to me and I get 25mbps download and just over 5mbps upload, which HIGHLY exceeds the numbers that Comcast guarantees (using their BOOST PLAN, another $10 a month) speeds of only 16mbps download. I actually got the Boost for 3 free months, saw no speed difference and just have regular Comcast.

In my case, I had all new cable totally replace the development (about 200 homes) where I am and it has been a wonderful experience hands down.

Now the subjective part. What can you realistically do with 25 megabytes per second??... well, there is NO streaming HD movie or TV content that is available through Youtube or Fancast or Xfinity or any service that I can not stream FLAWLESSLY without any buffering. The GREAT part about that is Xfinity (a company that for all intent and purpose IS Comcast) streams HD content in 1080P resolution, although their cable programming is only 1080I a noticeable difference for us videofiles. So, ideally, if you can wait an extra day and quality of a particular program is of great importance, wait for Fancast or Xfinity to have it available and watch it there, the resolution is 1080P which is as good as it gets - basically the standard for all HDTVs and it IS the quality that Fios delivers. I believe so does DirectTV.

That being said, you will notice issues with certain file types, such as HQ MP3 audio (917bit sound) which can actually buffer. Many times THAT is an UPLOAD issue from the streamer, more so than a download issue for you, but either way another good example is:

Let's say you are downloading a video at 1.5mbps and you are watching a streaming feed in excess of 480P resolution, chances are that your video you are watching mat buffer. All this is because the numbers you get at Speedtest.net or other data rate sites are defaulted to the closest servers. You have the option at such sites to choose servers all over the world and the more you PING and average out the numbers, the more realistic up/download numbers you will have.

Interestingly though, if you are doing multiple video downloads (any fast file transfer) you can have several going at 1.5mbps and since you aren't "watching the videos, only downloading them) you see these superfast speeds and no obvious buffering. Having multiple videos streaming and viewing though not only is a data download thing, but a video card issue too - now you are into apples and oranges and the math gets muddy.

I will say, I'm never disappointed though, 25mbps is flying, Fios Fiber-optic claims 50mbps and I'd love to try and see what I can get away with at those speeds. It's kinda like having a 500 gig hard drive and then going to a 1.5 terra-drive (3 times bigger) with the 500 gig, you seem to start running out of room if you are a large file collector, but the 1.5 terra-drive seems to never fill up. So a lot is prospective and everything is relative.

I remember back in the golden days of computing, when the only games in town were Compuserve, Prodigy and a few others, there really was no Internet or visual browsers back then, and the only content you had available was from their servers through dialup to you. The speed was 2400 baud (a word not even known by most people under 30) a speed nearly 24 TIMES SLOWER that a 56K modem - and IF you wanted MAX SPEED of 9600 baud (6 time slower than a telephone modem) you paid a $9.95 premium per HOUR - yes per hour. Forgive my math, but that meant at 2400 baud a 4 megapixel image would take 27 hours to download!!!

So, you got some good speed, much better than most people I would think. The next step is to use either DVI or HDMI output from your computer (with a 1 meg video card or better ideally) and connect your computer to a HDTV. That is my setup and my TV is used for all surfing, anything with the powerful desktop and of course all TV including 3D on this 56 inch screen. That is really amazing and I can only wish that happens for anyone who wants an All-in-One Tv/Web experience.

My wife has a netbook (me too but I use mine at work mostly) and I have a 17" HP laptop for those times when we want TV on, but feel like surfing too. It is always cool to see someone on a TV show and can't think of their name, and just 1) flip over to the web on the TV or 2) use either laptop to find out who it is. Often, it becomes a race to see who can find out an answer first.

Enjoy that speed, I love this topic and thought a few examples might help.

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Buzzbee made a great point too, about browser toolbars. I just cleaned up a friend's daughter's laptop, it was literally soooo filled with toolbars you couldn't see the webpage you were on - nuts!

And DON'T JUST HIDE TOOLBARS, uninstall them from Add and Remove Programs - close all browsers first, but get rid of the Bings and all the others that come packaged in the fine print of the End User Agreements of third party software.

When you install anything from Itunes to anything free (and even stuff you pay for) closely look as you go through the ACCEPT or NEXT options when installing software - nearly EVERYTHING has toolbars that default install and you need to uncheck them during install or you will see your browser SLOW DOWN TO NOTHING no matter how fast your connection is.

I regularly go through the Remove programs about 1 time a week to see if anything got through my eagle eyes. It is amazing how many websites themselves have toolbars, including forums - you can easily not spot a toolbar installing when you don't realize webpages, not just software can and will install toolbars UNLESS you uncheck the boxes during registration.lastly, not only does it use up resources (your RAM and processor usage basically) but it does put a dent in your download speed. Programs like I-GOOGLE lets you grab data from hundreds of sources which update constantly and whether it is local weather, top news stories, Horoscopes, cutest cat of the day and a million other things ALL slow you down and work in the background.

So kill toolbars EVERYONE, unless you use them - which is great. But don't just hide them, DELETE them from your computer and slim-line your processes.

Please enjoy the forum, and if it has helped you in any way, we hope that a small donation can be made to support our FULLY member supported forum. You will never see advertisements here, and that is because of the generous members who have made our forum possible. We are in our second decade as a beekeeping forum and all thanks to member support. At the top right of every page is a donations link. Please help if you can.

2400 baud (a word not even known by most people under 30) a speed nearly 24 TIMES SLOWER that a 56K modem

my dear, i remember when 2400 was high speed. i think our first modem was 500.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

And please stay away from the ASK toolbars and such. they integrate so far into the browsers it is hard to set another default search engine.I installed it accidentally,like John mentioned about not unchecking the install button with other software.I got it removed from my firefox but it still doesn't work the way it used to.In the address bar I was able to type in part of an address ,hit enter and it would transfer me to the site I was looking for. Now it redirects me to a Google search page with the site in question listed. The toolbars are all trying to track and prefetch things for you and many record all of your brosing habits for ad forwarding,making them consume a lot of browser resources and bandwidth.The more toolbars,the worse the problem. I have seen many people with MSN,Bing,Yahoo,Google,Ask,AIM and more all loaded and running. Such a waste. So if you don't need them.get rid of them.

always custom install programs. they hide those toolbars and extra stuff in there and you won't catch it unless you install step by step.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called the government. They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

always custom install programs. they hide those toolbars and extra stuff in there and you won't catch it unless you install step by step.

Very good point I didn't think to cover. It's so easy to default set a new program, but lazy and not complicated at all - and it definitely opens you up for toolbars and other 3rd party software that you try very hard to avoid.

The other thing about Default installing software is that it often changes the programs that launch various files. I have favorite programs to launch images, music, videos, text/document files, etc.. and when all of a sudden some other program launches a file type that I was trying to open, I knew I messed up and have to both back-track to find how I installed a different launch program and also need to go into control panel/ default programs to launch extensions and hand change what opens what.

I really keep a need computer, file organization, I have tons of software all of which I use for particular jobs - finding and using things should be easy for the pc user - I'm not big in the default folders "documents. music, images, videos, etc" I use my own file system for all the computers in the house, and moving files is much simpler if all my folders and subfolders are on all our computers. If you get a new computer (especially) then file management should be a breeze, turning a jumbled mess into an organized drive is tougher, but worth the effort in the long run. SUBFOLDERS are our friends and I have a ton of really logical ones.

Good point Kathy, really important - CUSTOM INSTALL ALL YOUR SOFTWARE or beware what you just allowed someone to put in your computer, and what might change your attribute software.

Please enjoy the forum, and if it has helped you in any way, we hope that a small donation can be made to support our FULLY member supported forum. You will never see advertisements here, and that is because of the generous members who have made our forum possible. We are in our second decade as a beekeeping forum and all thanks to member support. At the top right of every page is a donations link. Please help if you can.

I had 12mbps and liked it, but I recently went with a Roku on all my TVs and upped my speed to 18mbps. I can run two HD1080P tv shows and EVE online, which can be internet intense, all at the same time with no buffer issues or sputtering of the shows.

It all depends on what you want. If you're not doing TV over the net then 11mbps should be just fine for everything. If you're streaming TV in HD, I'd go for faster. Around here the difference in price from 12 mbps to 18mbps is only $5 per month and worth it for me.

I am paying for 12mbps. My download speed is 21 and my upload speed is 4. A year or two ago, the fastest upload speed they offered was 2 mbps. This speed is good enough for most things. I can download a 4 GB movie in half an hour (depends on how fast the uploader is). I can get an music album in a few minutes. I can watch videos in the highest quality. I know that things would be faster if I upgraded some stuff on my computer. Like I bought a new 2TB hard drive, but I haven't installed windows on it because then I would have to reinstall all my programs again, so I am running on the slower hard drive. I like to open multiple tabs, and right now I have 6 tabs open in Chrome and 5 tabs open in Firefox plus I am running Itunes and MS Office. That is quite a bit, but most of the time it works fine.If I open Photoshop though, everything gets hung up. The one I have the most trouble with is Gmail. It must use more resources, but I don't know why.I used to have faster internet, but then they raised the price, and for everything I want to do, this is plenty fast.And I remember the days when we used the word "baud" to describe speed. I don't remember how fast the computers I worked on were, but they took up entire rooms (IBM 360's) and the most important part in writing a program was in figuring out how to make it run faster. You would make one change in a program and it wouldn't be ready to test until the next day.And now I get impatient if I have to wait 15 seconds for something to load.

Your computer will be no faster than its weakest link. My guess is your pc is loaded down with to many hidden running programs and not enough ram to run them all at the same time and browse the net. What happens is this. Lets say you have one gig of ram. Over time you end up running over one gig worth of programs and your ram is full and the over flow needs to be written on the hard drive. Every time you click on a link or application your computer needs to move stuff off of your ram and write it to hard drive to make room for it. This makes your computer very slow. So it does not matter how fast your internet speed is, your computer is going to be as slow as a snail. If none of this makes sense to you then you need to have a computer geek clean up your pc for you.

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The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory